Over time, hydrocarbon-producing wells, such as gas, condensate, or oil producing wells, sometimes tend to “load up” with produced or condensed water. The water creates a hydrostatic head or backpressure on the producing formation, resulting in an impediment to well-flow and may reduce or stop hydrocarbon production. A common, cost-effective method of dealing with this issue in many gas wells is to implement a plunger lift system. Plunger lift takes advantage of a forced pressure differential between the casing and tubing, created by shutting a well in and then actuating a surface valve, to periodically remove water from a well.
While such plunger-based systems can be effective, they are dependent on reservoir pressure and can only remove a limited amount of liquid per day from a shallow depth. A pump is typically employed for deliquification when water volumes are high, the candidate well too deep, or reservoir pressure too low for a plunger application. Common pump types include rod pumps, electric submersible pumps, and hydraulic pumps. As may be appreciated by those skilled in the art, these pump types all suffer from reliability issues and considerable installation and deployment costs, since a workover rig is typically required for intervention. Similar issues are encountered with horizontal shale oil wells, since lower liquid production rates, high gas cuts, and tortuous wellbore trajectories tend to decrease the pump run lives achieved. These issues can make economical hydrocarbon production virtually impossible.
Therefore, what is needed are pumping systems and methods that are more cost-effective to deploy and replace and more resistant to deviated and tortuous trajectories.